Attracting young people by introducing the pride and feeling of belonging amongst craft practitioners
In just a few years the industry in Denmark will be in need of 99.000 skilled professionals. It is craftsmanship and know-how that’s going to create and build our future.
The Danish economy has
been strongly recovering. We are growing and the future looks bright, but not everything is as it should be. If companies are to be able to keep up with developments, we must educate many more skilled workers – not tomorrow, but today!
Skilled workers have been crucial in keeping the economy going through the Covid-19 crisis. Skilled workers with the right competencies are the cornerstone of driving development in many industries. If we also factor in the green transition and digitalisation, we see the need for skilled workers growing.
There is also a very pressing need for young people both with and without a high school education to understand that a vocational education (EUD) can be an alternative way to completing standard education.
“Why an EUD?”
A problem with taking an EUD, according to the young people, is that you are most often met with a negative reaction from the people around you, where you almost have to apologize and argue for why you did not choose a higher education. The young people experience that this negative perception in society of vocational education is due to a kind of invisible hierarchy, where some education has a higher prestige.
However, vocational education is an incredibly good stepping stone to many different future opportunities, and young people see a great advantage in being able to learn within an organization and quickly apply their knowledge in practice – rather than read about it in a book. You quickly make social acquaintances, and you encounter an everyday life that is varied, challenging and human.
In collaboration with Dansk Metal, WeThink has developed a 3-step strategy and executed the video content, which taps into the findings and insights gathered through qualitative focus groups with young people, east and west of Denmark’s Great Belt. The overall purpose of the campaign “come join us” is to change the perception of vocational education, and get more people to apply for an EUD.
We have targeted our campaign to the two crucial target groups – the young people and their parents. In addition to speaking in a language that suits each of the target groups, we have developed content that fits into something familiar to the young people and through a cross-platform mix we are present where the young people are. The main commercial has also been playing in movie theaters.
In our research, we also found that the secondary education supervisors who guide the young people towards the right education for them, mostly just advised them to choose the standard STX pathway. Other education options were often not even mentioned, much to the frustration of the young people. We therefore chose to also influence this target group in parallel throughout the campaign.
The campaign has been running since October and will end in the beginning of March. So far, the campaign has gotten 6 million impressions and 40.000 click-throughs to the landing page. The platforms range from Twitch to TikTok to YouTube.
